Observations from a life that often seems to travel through the looking glass....

Friday, March 6, 2009

The Great Hatching Experiment

Last week, a discussion was started on my chicken forum Backyardchickens.com wondering if a human being could incubate a chicken eggs to hatching.

Chicken eggs are normally set at 99-102 degrees in an incubator, so the temp isn't that far off. Then we started to think about areas of the body that are warm all the time. Groin and armpit were discussed and discarded because there is no way you could keep an egg there for 21 days unless you were confined to bed rest. So, that left us with the last best place to incubate an egg - cleavage!

Since I have an extra large "incubator", I was nominated to become the "Broody Hen". This was amid much hilarity, ribbing, and extreme peer pressure. Chicken People tend to be a raucous bunch!

I acquired a dozen fertile eggs from a wonderful lady up in East Bethel, MN. Since they were bantam eggs, which makes them the size of the medium eggs you'd get in the grocery store, I started to realize that I could easily warm more than 1 egg. After a bunch of experimenting (I'll leave that to your imagination) I decided that the optimum number of eggs was 8. The other 4 went into a regular incubator as the "control group". I have started a blog because there were a number of people interested in whether or not something this crazy could possibly work.

Feel free to drop by and see how it goes! Comments and questions are always welcome.

Katie! I didn't realize those threads got deleted :( I was looking for them and just happened to see that you had a website so I jumped on over here! I will be watching :D Good luck! Are you going to candle?

Hi, there! I saw your ad on Backyard Chickens forum and followed you here, trying to find an email address. I live in SE South Dakota and am looking for a few Ameraucauna pullets, willing to pick up. I am a "backyard hobbyist" and the chickens will be pets. Please contact me at moongazr@gmail.com. Thanks!

But I don't want to go among mad people, Alice remarked. Oh, you can't help that, said the Cat. We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad. How do you know I'm mad? said Alice. You must be, said the Cat, or you wouldn't have come here.